Comment & Other

During the trial in which Ulster and Ireland rugby players are accused of raping a young woman at a party, there has been fury at many of the comments made by the defence in court. When the young woman told the court she had consented to a kiss from Paddy Jackson but had not given consent to anything else, the defence barrister accused her of “teasing” Jackson, and asked her, “if you didn’t like him, why were you kissing him in his bedroom?”

In January 2010 when the earthquake struck we wrote: “The humanitarian catastrophe that has befallen Haiti beggars belief.” Hundreds of thousands were killed and millions left homeless, injured, denied medicine and starving. The country had just two fire stations and no ‘quake-proof’ housing. Even before the earthquake 80% lived below the poverty line and three-quarters were out of work. Haitians were therefore extremely vulnerable. Our headline read, “a disaster compounded by capitalism”.

On 15 January 1919, Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the finest brains of the German working class and its most heroic figures, were brutally murdered by the bloodthirsty, defeated German military, backed to the hilt by the cowardly social-democratic leaders Noske and Scheidemann. On this 99th anniversary, we look at Luxemburg’s inspirational, revolutionary legacy.

Rocked by the Brexit vote and then the general election upset, May has at times sought to pretend she empathises with the situation facing ordinary people. The Tories have shamefacedly tried to claim to the title of ‘the party for working people’.

When Donald Trump made the announcement that the US was recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, he did so in full knowledge that it would enrage Palestinians, with strike action and major protests taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and within the Israeli state. This anger has been […]

Adults In The Room is a must-read for those who aspire to building a left that can achieve governmental power and transform society. That is not because Yanis Varoufakis has the answers about how to achieve that, but because his experience as Finance Minister brutally demonstrates how capitalism will operate to try to block such change.

2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of what is commonly accepted to be the start of the “Troubles”. In a few brief months in 1968 and 1969, Northern Ireland changed forever. A chain of events mobilised tens of thousands of young people, both Catholic and Protestant, in a mass movement which challenged the Unionist government and briefly posed the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of society.

As we go to press, talks to create a new pro-independence government in Catalonia continue. The election on 21st December resulted in a majority for pro-independence parties. The Spanish state and the conservative Rajoy government had attempted to suppress the independence referendum and subsequently suspended Catalan autonomy, prompting the snap election.